Beetlejuice
Season 2: The Sleeper Saga
Episode 24: The Tournament
Bertha anxiously awaited her arrival at school. She anxiously awaited seeing her friends after a bit of news she received in her e-mail inbox. Her legs couldn't stop bouncing up and down from the anxiety, the smile plastered on her face never faded even in the slightest, her eyes wide with anticipation and excitement. Mrs. Hennings pulled up to the front of the school and Bertha nearly slammed her face into the window before she gave herself chance to even open the car door. She dashed away as her mother called out, "Have a nice day, honey." Bertha spotted both Ben and Lydia conversing with Claire and Prudence near the tree to the right grassy area of the school's entrance. "Hey!" She called out to them, happy and excited. She needed to catch her breath as she reached the four of them and Claire gingerly placed her hand on the winded girl's back to do what she could to calm her down. "Bertha, what in the world is going on? Are you being chased by The Black Mage, or something?" Lydia asked while Ben got defensive and watched out for their new enemy.
Bertha took three deep breaths before reaching into her backpack and presenting a printout that she had made from her computer. The printout said, "Drakenfield National Tournament Registration Acceptance Letter" and the others simply stared at what was written on it, studying it carefully. "Drakenfield?" Ben read aloud and then the concept finally hit him, "Wait, they have tournaments for this card game?!" He shouted his exasperation. "All over the world." Bertha responded, "It was really hard to register too. I needed to sign up two months in advance and beat fifty competitors, plus have them sign a record sheet that had them sign their names, and best card plus date it to confirm. After that I needed to wire seventy dollars for the entry fee." "Why is it so expensive to enter as a participant?" Lydia asked with her own exasperation over the entry price. "The tournament is being held in Oregon over the course of two weeks. It's gonna be huge!" Bertha shouted excitedly and threw up her arms to give an exaggerated visual representation. "Letter of acceptance" Claire mumbled to herself. "So your application for this tournament was accepted?" "Yah! Isn't it awesome?" Bertha began shouting once again. She then got somber and began to pout a little, "The only problem is, I won't be able to see you guys for those two weeks." "I knew someone from Oregon when I was younger." "We know!" The rest of the group piped in at the same time. "Sorry guys." Lydia apologized. "Sierra just kind of got me thinking about him. I wonder where he is now." She then closed her eyes and quoted him once again, "We leave our mark wherever we go. How do you want history to remember you?" "I honestly didn't think that you were into those corny lines." Ben retorted. "I'm not. He kinda beat them into my head." Lydia answered with a light blush. "I'd like to go to Oregon with you." Claire said to Bertha. "The sights, the shopping..." The trees." Lydia interrupted sarcastically. "Trees?!" Claire asked slightly confused mere moments before the school bell rang.
They slowly swarmed into their classroom and took their seats to begin the school day. Normality continued as the classes rolled on uneventfully. No sign of Grimnak or even Merlin for that matter. The only noticeable thing was that as the day wore on, Bertha became more and more apprehensive. Lydia eventually realized that something seemed so silly to her was so important to her friend and tried to cheer Bertha up, however the tall scrawny girl never actually showed up for lunch. Worried for her, Lydia decided to see if she could locate her before lunch was over.
Meanwhile The Black Mage opened up a projection gate within the walls of the school and decided that it would be wise to use an invisibility spell to hide both himself and the gate. 'I can't allow those brats to get in my way anymore.' He thought to himself. 'But this place is so crowded.' His observation was correct since he arrived during passing time between classes. He soon noticed the students hurrying to their destinations at the sound of a bell. 'What of my dragon's name was that?' He asked himself upon hearing the noise that caused the students to change their behavior. 'Is it some kind of warning bell?' He watched as the various students piled into different rooms and decided to peak into one of them for observational purposes. He watched and listened as the teacher paced back and forth at the front of the classroom giving the lesson assigned for that class, bringing up memories of his own time being taught how to use alchemy in his own youth. He made his way to another classroom and listened to the teacher give a different lesson than the first one. 'So each teacher has either a particular agenda or perhaps a specialty subject. I wonder which of these rooms the little brats are in now.' He thought to himself. 'I may want to utilize this as an information point. Learning as much of the teachings of this world as I can may prove useful.' The moment his thoughts ended, something caught his attention. A set of double doors swung open and out came one of his targets, Lydia was worried for Bertha and set up her own search party consisting of herself, Ben, Claire and Prudence.
They divided the school into four quadrants to make finding her quicker, the one who found her first would console her and wait for the others to come find them. 'So, one of them is saddened by something, eh? Perhaps I can use this to my advantage.' Grimnak said to himself and followed Lydia through her portion of the school. Silently keeping behind her, Grimnak followed. Every once in a while, Lydia would get a strange shiver down her spine and look to see if she was being followed. Turning back after seeing nothing, she continued her search for her distraught friend. 'I hope her flight wasn't today, I wanted to see her off.' Lydia thought to herself. 'Just which city in Oregon was she going to? The only place that I know of that does things like card tournaments was the Portland Convention Center and I've only been there once for a music convention simply out of curiosity.' She continued through a set of double doors that separated the main hall from the side halls and Grimnak hesitated to follow remembering that he must stay within eyesight of his portal at all times. Growling to himself, he gave up on pursuing her and turned to try and choose someone else until he noticed them all heading down an individual hall. 'Gah, how can I discover more of my adversaries if I can't even follow them? The limitations of my projection gate are quite vexing.' He thought to himself.
Somewhere within the school library, Bertha sat by herself silently crying to herself. She hadn't realized that leaving her friends would be so hard, but she rarely got the chance to travel at all and now she was going to get on a plane to travel to Portland, Oregon in two days, the only detail that she failed to mention earlier. She wasn't bawling or anything, she just didn't know what to say was simply trying to figure out why flying out for just under two weeks made her feel as if she was moving away and never going to see them ever again. She kept her Drakenfield deck in front of her to try and keep her busy thinking about her strategy and attempt to cheer herself up. 'How is this so hard? It's not like that I'm moving away. I'll just be gone for two weeks, so what's wrong with me?' She thought to herself while looking through her cards and making sure she had the right figurines for the eighth time. Her figurines kept a dragon theme to them, that is to say they all were European two legged dragons of various sizes and colors, the tallest being only a mere inch and a half tall with an inch and a quarter diameter round base. She decided to place her cards down in front of her and pick up one particular figurine of an intimidating looking dragon that was designed to look as if it was made from diamonds. "What should I do, Diamond Aura?" She asked it as if she thought it would respond. When it inevitably didn't, she sighed deeply and placed her head on the table with her arms cradling it for support.
Lunch was soon to end when Prudence walked in to the library. She had anticipated that Bertha would have been in a few places but thought that the library should be a last resort. She wandered around for a short while until she spotted her life-long friend sitting at an empty table near the back of the empty library. She hesitated, but inevitably decided to ignore Lydia's instructions and cheer up her friend before informing the others. She silently snuck up to Bertha and quietly asked, "Got a second deck?" Referring to Bertha's favorite game, Drakenfield. Bertha was startled slightly out of her thoughts and quickly turned to look at the tiny girl. "How long have you guys been looking for me?" She asked, saddened and slightly embarrassed. "The entire lunch." Prudence answered. Now Bertha thought that she was even more pathetic and simply placed her forehead on the table and let her arms hang as if she was dead. "So, did you bring a second deck or what?" Prudence asked once again.
Bertha gingerly brought out another Drakenfield deck for Prudence to play with. The deck consisted of a Wasteland Battlefield field card. The card was unique that it didn't have any specific paths as much as some squares looked to have various weapons strewn around. The place looked like the aftermath of a medieval war. The box of figurines consisted of what looked like veteran warriors in rusted armor. Prudence looked through the deck quickly and then began to shuffle after the two friends slid their field cards together to make the entire field.
After they thoroughly shuffled their own decks, they traded and cut each other's before handing them back and placing them face down on the table to their right and, without saying a word to each other, picking up the top six cards. Then they each grabbed their designated number of stones as written on their field card. Bertha took twenty while Prudence took seventeen. Prudence has seen Bertha play many times in the past and knew that she always played a Dragon deck and maximized her potential with various Dragon themed field cards depending on the type of strategy she employed for that battle. This time, Bertha was playing with a "Dragon's Nest" field card, a card that looked like a desert with craters and large grey egg shells scattered around various places. 'That must mean that she means to overwhelm my forces with the hatchlings that this card's ability produces.' Prudence thought to herself. She knew that she wasn't quite adept at changing strategy on the fly as Bertha was but she was determined to cheer up her friend by talking to her during a Drakenfield game.
"You can go first." Bertha quietly said to Prudence. She was quiet to be respectful of her environment in combination with her embarrassment and confusion. Prudence picked up the top card of her deck and placed it in her hand after studying it. She then plucked two cards from her hand and placed them face up in between her and her field card. "I summon, Sphinx Guardian and Veteran Swordsman." The small girl quietly announced while she opened the container that held her figurines. She picked up one that looked like a lioness' body with the head of a woman and the other looked like a tall battle scared warrior with a sword in hand and rusted armor. She placed the sphinx on the third square of the closest row to her and the warrior in the fifth square of the center row. "And with that, I end my turn." Prudence stated.
Bertha casually drew her card and thought out her strategy to herself. She decided to place two character cards down removing a total of ten stones from her stockpile. "I summon Crock Dragon and Crystal Dragon." She stated, placing the tokens of a green dragon with crocodile spines on its back and a white glittery dragon in the closest row to herself. "And with their arrival, my Dragon's Nest field effect activates, allowing me to place one Hatchling token adjacent to each dragon that was summoned." She then took two pennies and placed them on a square to the right of each figurine. 'What is she doing?' Bertha thought to herself wondering why Prudence was battling her when the next class had clearly started. "It's hard, isn't it?" Prudence said solemnly. Bertha looked up at her tiny friend surprised. "Your first trip out of state. You don't know what to say and it feels as if you're never going to come back. 'What if I like it here too much and we end up moving?' You ask yourself." Bertha just stared at the tiny girl, thinking to herself 'Did she just read my mind?' Prudence simply smiled at the tall lanky girl and said, "Trust me. You'll come back a champion." The happy, prideful smile on her face beaming as the sunlight.
Bertha's nerves calmed themselves down as she began to realize that she actually had nothing to worry about. She allowed her own smile to stretch across her face as she let the tears flow. After a few seconds of silently crying, Bertha reached her hand out and took one of her figurines and moved it forward as she announced in a whisper, I move Crystal Dragon forward three spaces and then pay three more stones to cast the Dragon's Claw item card and equip it to my Crystal Dragon." She placed the card from her hand beneath the Crystal Dragon's character card to indicate that it was equipped to it.
The two played their game until the end of school and Prudence made sure to walk with her best friend Bertha to meet with the others to discuss the tournament trip further. Apparently she was leaving in the morning and needed to pack the moment she had gotten home. Throughout that week, Bertha talked out her anxieties more and more the closer the deadline.
Bertha wasn't the only one who was busy through that week, Grimnak spent the entire time roaming from classroom to classroom listening and learning what the teachers had to say. Math, science, English, and various other classes. When' Bertha's flight had finally taken off to send her to Oregon for the tournament, he sat in the back of a math classroom scribbling on a pad of paper with a pencil, both of which he had procured from the student store near the science labs. He listened and worked the problems out in his head and began frustrating himself with advanced algebra.
The day had finally come. They all traveled to the nearest big city to see their friend off at the airport and Bertha was ready for her flight, her anxieties eased by the support of her friends. "We'll miss you." Claire said while she hugged her friend goodbye. They all hugged the traveling Bertha in turn wishing her good luck as they did. "Go show 'em what championship material really looks like." Ben stated. "Do your best." Prudence reminded her. "Good luck, Bertha. And have fun." Lydia told her. Bertha soon walked with her mother through the line and boarded the plane. The gang watched as the plane took off over the horizon and into the sunrise. As the plane made its way out of view, Lydia couldn't help but think that thing would be much different by the time she got home.
End of Season 2 Episode 4